Criticism of the leaders' actions was severe and constant, even from their best friends in England. The real father of the colony, the Reverend John White, wrote to Winthrop in alarm, saying that he desired him “to have an eye to one thinge, that you fall not into that evill abroad, which you labored to avoyd at home, to binde all men to the same tenets and practise.” Stansby, in a letter to the Reverend Mr. Wilson, complained that, on account of their strictness, over one half of the people were not admitted to church membership, and that this would do them much harm. Stephen Winthrop, temporarily in London, sent home word to his brother John, that “here is great complaint against us for our severity against Anabaptists. It doth discourage any people from coming to us for fear they should be banished if they dissent from us in opinion.” Sir George Downing, a cousin of the younger Winthrop, in a letter retailing English opinion of the colony, speaks of that “law of banishing for conscience, which makes us stinke everywhere.”[421] Footnote 421: _Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll._, Series V, vol. I, p. 252; Series IV, vol. VII, p. 11; Series V, vol. VIII, p. 200; Series IV, vol. VI, p. 537. Nor must the standpoint of the English citizen be neglected. England's American possessions, in spite of monopolies and charters, were coming more and more to be looked upon as the heritage of the English people, as the land of opportunity for those who fell by the wayside in life's race at home, as well as for religious exiles. Yet here was one of the best parts of the whole continent being monopolized by a band of people who rejected, oppressed, and banished others, or at the least deprived them of all political rights, not because they were undesirable citizens, not because they were immoral, but because they refused to conform to the peculiar church polity and doctrine, neither Church of England nor English Puritan, which the first settlers had evolved in the American wilderness.